Final Day of Negotiations

Well, it has been just about a week since we left Copenhagen, but that wasn’t the end of the negotiations. A lot has gone on this week, drawing on the same issues we saw happening at the end of the first week: developing nations and developed nations unable to see eye to eye on things. One of the interesting things I have been reading about it the fact that all along nations and the UNFCCC had spoken about the fact that the temperature rise could be no more than 2 degrees Celsius. However, over one hundred nations are pushing for no more than a 1.5 degree rise in temperatures, creating yet another divide within the negotiations. Countries in the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), least developed countries, and some African countries are among the ones pushing for that 0.5 degree difference, while other nations continue to push for the 2 degree target. Apparently Apisai Ielemia, Prime Minister of Tuvalu, stated that he wouldn’t sign anything that had any temperature raise above 1.5 degrees. (Tuvalu continues to speak out strongly at the conference. Earlier this week, they had threatened to walk out.)

But even more interesting than this 0.5 degree debate is a text that was leaked some how from the Secretariat a few days ago, and the contents are quite frankly shocking. The text is a UNFCCC analysis report of the pledges and actions made by a number of both Annex I and non-Annex I parties. In the document it was found that there is a gap in the amount of gigatonnes of carbon that would be pulled from the atmosphere with the current state of pledges, and the needed amount of gigatonnes of carbon necessary to stabilize emissions. As if that is not leaving many unhappy already, one line seemes to sum up exactly what the UN has been feeling about the climate negotiations the entire time, saying that if we follow this suit of under-ambitious targets, we would be left with “an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal of above 550 ppm, with a related temperature raise around 3° C.” Wow.

This 3 degree limit would mean even more dire circumstances for many nations in the world, like Tuvalu and other nations of AOSIS. Scientists and influential environmentalists like Bill McKibben, writer and founder of 350.org, have spelled out for years that the maximum emissions in to the atmosphere is 350 ppm or else our Earth will have passed the tipping point and we will no longer be able to bounce back. 550ppm?! Really?

This is the last day of negotiations. Nations leaders, like Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, arrived in Copenhagen within the past 24 hours. People across the world are crossing their fingers, hoping, and praying that something, just something will come out of today. Leaders have been meeting behind closed doors discussing a wide range of topics from aid to developing countries for adaptation to emissions monitoring. My fingers are crossed. Desmond Tutu was right, we the world expect a real deal.

An Eventful End to the First Week

Don’t worry everyone, regardless of the fact that I have not posted in days, rest assured I am alive and well. Saturday was my last day at the conference, and boy, what an amazing day it was. We arrived at Bella Center bright and early hoping to get a seat a the plenary session. After finding out it had been postponed an hour, we headed in and listened for a few hours as the delegates reiterated many of the same points we have heard time and time again. We were still waiting to hear about whether or not a contact group would be created to discuss the proposals set forth by Tuvalu and discussed earlier in the week. The answer we all heard was, well, not exactly what we wanted to hear.

“I’ve been informed that a bit more time is needed and that consultations of this issue will continue into next week,” said Madame President Connie Hedegaard.

Well, perfect. It was at this point that we all continued to be a little downtrodden about the conference. How could we proceed if we couldn’t decide on how to discuss things?! In any case, what followed Hedegaard’s announcement, really cut to the core. Believe it or not, it came from Tuvalu. Tuvalu addressed the fact that their entire population is not two meters above sea level. But as Tuvalu continued, they brought into light the stance of the U.S. government and how critical it is that a climate decision be made in our own Senate.

“We can suggest that for [Obama] to honor his Nobel prize, he should address the greatest threat to humanity that we have before us, climate change, and the greatest threat to security, climate change,” Tuvalu said, with the sound attention of the entire room.

Tuvalu continued to speak about how important this decision is, but his final statement I think hit home with a lot more than just the IC students.

“As a humble servant of the government to Tuvalu, I have to make a strong plea…I woke up this morning and I was crying and that’s not an easy thing for a grown man to admit,” Tuvalu said. “The fate of my country rests in your hands.”

The room erupted in applause. For me, even though I have heard this type of information time and time again throughout my courses here, this statement was an eye opener. “The fate of my country rests in your hands.” It is an unreal idea to grasp. One of the things that the youth at the conference, since last year, have been putting forth in documents, banners, press releases, and protests is the following: Survival is not negotiable. It is the truth.

That night, while tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Copenhagen to the conference center, with rallying cries for climate action and justice, a smaller, calmer event was happening just outside the Bella Center doors. A group of us attended a candlelight vigil, a peaceful way of saying that this is important to us and hoping leaders would recognize. With candles in hand, we stood circled around a young girl speaking about how she wanted her world to survive. (This was really a day of home hitting speeches.) After she spoke, both Mary Robinson and Bill McKibben delivered their own versions as well, all powerful beyond belief. But the final speaker brought tears to my eyes. Archbishop Desmund Tutu flew from Africa to address the climate issue, urging us to chant with him, “We the world expect a real deal.”

Up Until This Point…

Up until this point, the negotiations seemed to be going like always, lots of prepared speeches, expressed opinions, frequent rebuttals, and the like. The youth at the conference, or YOUNGOs as we call ourselves, have been meeting everyday to brief each other on what is going on at the meetings, what to expect, who is likely to hold negotiations back, etc. Since we are an actual delegation now, we have a seat at the negotiations and the other day our representatives got the opportunity to address all the delegates at a COP meeting. That is basically amazing. We even dropped in (or perhaps interrupted) a climate skeptics talk with some banners and chants on how clean energy creates jobs and how this is now an energy revolution. O and did I mention it was a live broadcast? Pretty cool stuff.

But what is even more interesting, and perhaps a little frightening, is what has been actually happening at the plenary sessions since Tuvalu declared a suspension of the COP. The answer is, well, nothing. Thursdays plenary session was originally when Kazakhstan was to give their two cents, like Tuvalu had done before, about their provisions to the Kyoto Protocol. But it seemed the same set of occurrences followed. There was much debate coming from all sides, from India and China holding tight to Kyoto, some small nations looking for Kyoto to have some changes, and European countries just wanting a legally binding agreement.

Since the suspension and the endless debate on virtually nothing, the NGOs have spent hours waiting in the plenary room for hours, making sure we could get a seat for the next plenary session, but it seems this morning when we tried to sit down to listen to the meeting, to our surprise, we were told to leave and told that it is a closed session. Great. This makes us all even more nervous. Hedegaard pulled select delegates into the closed meeting yesterday and we will supposedly see some form of decision about where to go next by tomorrow. Supposedly, the nations are to have some form of draft by tomorrow. But with the, what looks like, secrecy regarding these sessions, I just don’t see that happening. We are halfway through the conference and have yet to see any solid progress come out. The contact groups have not even been able to discuss anything because Hedegaard canceled all contact group meetings until she and the delegates came out of the closed meetings.

Tomorrow will be an interesting and stimulating day, I am sure, which makes me happy that we are leaving Sunday and not Saturday like I thought. The IC delegation has some unnamed sources that say the delegates will for sure have some form of a commitment treaty, less than 10 pages long, by the end of the two weeks. And a number of people we question about it say the same. I am of course hopeful in every way that that some form of solid commitment will occur, but if it is to happen, the delegates are going to have to work diligently through this next week to make sure of that. All nations have their own interests in mind, like I have said time and time again, but this is the time to understand how drastic this issue is. As I heard in one of my side events the other day, this is not an issue that is happening “over there,” it is happening here. Let’s get it done.

Until tomorrow…

Day 3 at COP15

Just when I thought nothing could top my meeting with the NZed delegation, I came upon Wednesday and all that the day had to offer. After getting to the conference center early and helping to set up the booth, a few of us headed over to the Plenary session. The room was packed with observers and press, sitting on the floor, on random barriers in the room, standing, basically everywhere! The plenary bouncer even had to turn tons of people away. Clearly this is a huge deal.

When we went into the session, believing it to be the scheduled Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, or CMP, we were shocked to find that the regular Conference of the parties meeting, or COP, was still in the heat of debate. And boy, what a debate it was. The small island nation of Tuvalu, the fourth smallest island in the world, proposed a number of provisions to the original climate treaty, asking for more strict climate measures. Bigger non-Annex 1 countries, like India and China, responded at the session saying that no such provisions are necessary and stating that creating a new treaty was in now way a necessary action. Tuvalu went back and forth with the nations, clarifying that their provisions, are only provisions, not an entirely new treaty, and agree that no new treaty needs to be made. What I found interesting was that those non-Annex 1 countries continued saying that no new provisions should be made to the treaty when sections of the treaty have not even been implemented yet. Other island nations voiced their support of Tuvalu in rebuttal.

The debate went back and forth for another two hours, well over time of the COP Plenary session, and cutting into the time of the CMP session. Tuvalu called for a contact group to be created, so that the issue could be formally discussed, after which those same non-Annex 1 countries voiced that no such group should be made and that consultations should be done instead, bringing about another new debate. Finally, COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard chimed in deciding that she would consult about whether or not to create the contact group. The room let out a gasp as Tuvalu expressed their concerns that it was too important an issue to them and therefore requested a suspension of the COP until a decision could be made.

Hedegaard said she would hold the decision off until 3 p.m. During the two-hour waiting period for a decision, Tuvalu and small island nation supporters gathered outside the plenary doors with banners saying “Tuvalu is the REAL DEAL,” “Stand with Tuvalu” and “Rich countries pay your debt,” and chanting things like “Survival!” and “Tuvalu!” When the time came, it was in the middle of the late CMP session but Hedegaard paused the session to make the announcement that no decision had yet been made.

It was a really exciting day, making the rest of the day seem somewhat of a blur. But what happened later that evening, with a few banners, a delegation of youth, and a lot of enthusiasm, was one I, and many, will not forget.

Days 2 at COP15

So after some amazing opening speeches at the welcoming ceremony, the conference is continuing to be an amazing experience. Tuesday was my day for poll management, which basically meant that i tallied up the results from the previous day’s question and display it at our booth with these awesome boxes that we created before we left. After the job was done, I took the time to look at all the booths that are here. Ok, so I didn’t get to all of them, but by the time I got to about half, my arms were filled with free items and pamphlets so I had no choice but to be done.

Afterward, a group of us headed over to one of the side events about Brazil’s use of biofuels. It was a really interesting session, mostly because believe it or not, I have never really been a big believer in them (biofuels that is, I believe in Brazil). My immediate thoughts when it comes to biofuels is about the land use. If all of this land is being used for crop that is going directly into vehicles, then we must be cutting forests or rainforests down in the process. Not only that, but if we are growing these crops solely for biofuels, well that is just tons upon tons of food that is not going to the people. There are millions of people in our nations today who suffer from hunger, malnutrition, etc. If they aren’t getting any food, why is the extra amount that is being grown not going there. My final concern with it is that agriculture is energy intensive. So although the creation of biofuels is done in the effort to reduce vehicle emissions, the energy that goes into the growing process has its own issues.

However, upon coming into the meeting I, of course, recieved free things, like a tote-bag filled with literature about biofuel use in Brazil. What I didn’t expect to receive, but did, was a pamphlet on biofuel myths. And sure enough, all of my concerns were addressed. That doesn’t mean that now all of my concerns are gone and I love biofuels, but it just makes me want to research more about them to create a balanced opinion on it. (After all, I am a journalism major.) The one question that kind of came up for me after reading the myth book that was not addressed was the fact that intense use of monoculture, like what would be done for growing biofuel crop, sucks nutrients from the land at a higher rate than if one was using permaculture, resulting in a degraded and agriculture useless land. If that happens, biofuel crop areas would move form place to place, degrading land. This is just a speculation. Makes sense though.

After the biofuels, I got a pretty rare and exciting opportunity from my professor, Susan Allen-Gil. At an evening reception Monday, my professor started chatting with this woman randomly who ended up being on of the advisers of the New Zealand delegation! Anyone who knows me knows that since my month-long trip there this past summer, I have been obsessed with the country and excited when the name is ever even mentioned. While chatting it up with him, she dropped my name, how I went there, and wrote my semester paper on NZ! Thank you Susan! After the biofuel talk, I got the chance to meet him and one of the Maori (native) representatives from the delegation. It was pretty amazing. Needless to say, I got business cards and have a new assignment to send him my paper when I get home. Awesome.

Day 1 at COP15 -”Let’s get it done.”

Sorry for not having a post yesterday, but the day was jam packed with events and booth preparation. O yes, the booth!

Well, for those who didn’t know, part of my International Environmental Policy course this semester was to as a class come up with an influential booth for the conference. Not many schools end up actually having a booth while here, so this was definitely something special. We worked all semester on creating a public opinion poll for people to answer at the conference! We call it POPCOP, the Public Opinion Poll of the Conference of Parties (Climate Change Conference). So far we have seen awesome responses from the public, with the number of votes increasing intensively every hour. It’s really exciting to see our hard work all semester finally pay off. We have gotten interviews about it from a European news service, pictures taken by a Swedish newspaper, and have made tons of contacts from all over the world. It has really been amazing.

In the morning, after a wild goose chase to find NGO tickets to the Plenary session (the main opening session where all countries meet together to welcome each other to the conference), we finally made it in. The sessions ran for almost 2.5 hours, but the speeches given were outstanding. The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Denmark, Mr. Lars Løkke Rasmussen was the first to speak, welcoming all to the country and expressing how important the next two weeks are to our planet’s future.

“Global Warming knows no border,” he said. “It does not discriminate. It affects us all. And we are here today, because we are all committed to take action.”

The Prime Minister is right. This conference, though some believe nothing will come out of it, is going on because we are at such a critical point in our world’s cumulative life. It is something that is affecting everyone and if we fail to act NOW, that will mean catastrophic consequences for not one, not two, but every nation and every person. After the Mayor of Copenhagen, the Chair of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC all spoke, Mr. Maciej Nowicki, COP14 president passed the torch, so to speak, to Ms. Connie Hedegaard, the now COP 15 president. I am a sucker for a good speech and Hedegaard’s speech really went right to the core.

“In short: let’s get it done,” she said. “This is the time to deliver! This is the place to commit. And yes there are still many obstacles. But it is up to us to overcome them. And it is do-able.”

No objections coming from my point of view. The next two weeks our nations leading delegates are going to be in heated debates, taking their own country’s interests and needs into account, but what I hope all will come to find is that there is an underlying need for every nation to address climate change, not just talk about it, or talk in circles, but act. Let’s get it done delegates.

A Critical Starting Point

Hey all! This is Rebecca Webster (Becky to most), the new proud Eco Dump blogger! To give you a little info about the environmental girl you’ll be hearing from for the rest of the year, here’s my story!

I came to IC as a journalism major, but after taking the amazing Environmental Biology class offered here, I declared my double major by the end of my freshmen year in Environmental Studies. Basically, prior to college, I knew, well, nothing about the environment, probably just as much as the average American. But taking the environmental biology class (EnviBi as we used to call it) opened my eyes to a passion that I never knew existed in me: the environment. I mean face it, most of us live our lives day to day so caught up in our cellphones, careers, and tasks, taking little time to, as the saying goes, stop and smell the roses. I wanted this to change for myself. So here I am, now a junior, wanting ever more to make my mark as an environmental journalist.

I’ve started writing this blog at a critical point in our nation’s, and our world’s, history. Tomorrow, along with the other members of my International Environmental Policy class, we will head to Copenhagen, Denmark for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP15.  We have all heard in the news about glaciers melting, the energy bill sitting in Congress, and climate change causing catastrophic impacts around the globe. These next two weeks at the conference are going to be a pivotal point for our nations leaders, as far as cooperation. We are all hoping to see great things come from it, and really, it is vital that we do.

Expect to hear a lot from me over the next few weeks. Although my class can only stay for the first week of the negotiations (because exams are the next!) I will be keeping a close eye on the negotiations, which nations are cooperating and which aren’t. So check back!

Peace and Hope for Change.